Passage Two Adolf Hitler
was the ruler of Germany from 1933 to 1945. Guided by concepts of elitism and
racism, he established a brutal totalitarian regime under the ideological banner
of National Socialism, or Nazism. His drive for empire Line resulted in the
devastation of World War II, culminating in Germany’s defeat and the reordering
of world power relationships. Hitler failed as a student in the classical
secondary schools, a situation that contributed to his desire to become an
artist. He went to Vienna in 1907 but was unable to gain admission to the
Academy of Fine Arts. He lived a shadowy, alienated existence in multiracial
Vienna until 1913. His years were characterized by melancholy, aimlessness, and
racial hatred—in Vienna he developed his lifelong obsession with the danger that
world Jewry posed to the Aryan race. Hitler’s rise to power
paralleled the unstable course of the Weimar Republic, which replaced the fallen
Hohenzollern monarchy(霍亨索伦王朝). The abortive Communist revolution in Germany and
the dictated Peace of Versailles determined Hitler’s decision to enter politics.
In 1919 he joined a small political faction in Munich and within the next year
formed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. He directed the
organizations with an iron hand and used its meetings to deliver forceful
rhetorical assaults on Germany’s enemies. In 1923 he led the party into the
ill-fated Munich Putsch. This action resulted in his imprisonment.
While in prison at Landsberg, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf(我的奋斗)(德语), which
became the standard work of Nazi political philosophy. He defined the enemy as
world Jewry, international communism, effete liberalism, and decadent
capitalism. Hitler offered instead pure Aryan blood and the renewal of German
nationalism under a fighting elite. Germany would once more become the leading
power on the Continent and gain its living space in central Europe and
Russia. The word "effete" in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.